ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development:

Towards a
new paradigm

David Souter, Don MacLean, Ben Akoh and Heather Creech

ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm 1

 © 2010 International Institute for Sustainable
Development (IISD)

ICTs, the Internet Published by the International Institute for Sustainable

Development

and Sustainable IISD contributes to sustainable development by

advancing policy recommendations on international
Development: trade and investment, economic policy, climate change
and energy, measurement and assessment, and natural
resources management, and the enabling role of
Towards a new communication technologies in these areas. We report on
international negotiations and disseminate knowledge
paradigm gained through collaborative projects, resulting in
more rigorous research, capacity building in developing
countries, better networks spanning the North and
the South, and better global connections among
researchers, practitioners, citizens and policy-makers.

David Souter IISD’s vision is better living for all—sustainably; its

mission is to champion innovation, enabling societies
Don MacLean to live sustainably. IISD is registered as a charitable
organization in Canada and has 501(c)(3) status in the
Ben Okoh United States. IISD receives core operating support
from the Government of Canada, provided through the
Heather Creech Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the
International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and
Environment Canada, and from the Province of Manitoba.
The Institute receives project funding from numerous
governments inside and outside Canada, United
We gratefully acknowledge the Nations agencies, foundations and the private sector.
generous support of the International
International Institute for Sustainable Development
Development Research Centre (IDRC).
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2 ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm

 ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development:
Towards a new paradigm

David Souter, Don MacLean, Ben Akoh and Heather Creech

1 Introduction page 4

Box 1: Internet governance and Internet public policy

2 Defining Sustainable Development page 7

3 The Impact of New Technology, ICTs and the

Internet on Sustainable Development page 10

Box 2: The complex cloud

4 The Digital Economy page 16

5 The Green Economy page 21

6 Integrating ICTs and Sustainable Development page 27

Box 3: Adaptive policy-making

7 Conclusion and Recommendations page 36

Reference List page 38

ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm 3

 Introduction
1 Two issues of profound importance
lie at the heart of current thinking
about the development of global
economies and societies: the challenge of
environmental sustainability, and the potential of
information and communications technology.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the World
Commission on Environment and Development
and the subsequent UN Summit on that theme,
held in Rio de Janeiro and popularly known as the
Earth Summit, focused the world’s attention on
sustainable development. They recognized that
growth that depended on short-term depletion
of natural resources could not lead to long-term
prosperity or welfare. They defined sustainable
development as “development that meets the
needs of the present, without compromising the
ability of future generations to meet their own
needs.” (WCED 1987, part 1, sec. 2, para. 1).
The importance of sustainability has been
increasingly recognized in development policy-
making since the Earth Summit took place.
Although it is concerned with economic and social
as well as ecological sustainability, environmental
issues—and particularly climate change—have
continued to sharpen this emphasis.
Comparable attention to information and
communication technologies (ICTs) in
development arose in the late 1990s and early years
of the present century, and also focused around
a UN Summit; in this case, the two-part World
Summit on the Information Society held in 2003
and 2005. Dramatic changes in the technology
and economics of communications enabled rapid
and far-reaching expansion of communications
access and the range of communications services,
including the advent and spread of the Internet.
At the least, these changes in communications
4 ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm
have had profound effects on economic and
social structures and on individual behaviour. For
many in the field, these—and potential changes
yet to come—represent the transition to a post-
industrial Information Society, in which knowledge
and networks play a more prominent role than
capital and hierarchy. This paper is concerned
with the relationship between these two critical
dimensions of change in global policy in the early
years of the twenty-first century, and their impact
on global development policy and practice.
It is now generally—if not yet universally—
recognized that the world’s present approach
to growth is built upon foundations that are not
sustainable because of resource depletion and
the negative impacts of pollution and greenhouse
gas emissions on the relationship between people
and the planet. Climate change in particular is
having an impact not only on people’s lives and
livelihoods, but on the increasingly urgent search
for “green growth,” that is to say for alternative
economic strategies that meet the needs of the
present without compromising the opportunities
of future generations.
It is also widely recognized that new technologies,
particularly ICTs, are having a major impact on
economic and social relationships among
individuals, communities and nations. High-speed
telecommunications have been a major driving
force of globalization in capital, labour and product
markets. Mobile telephones have, for the first time,
made immediate communications at a distance
available to the majority of individuals worldwide.
The Internet has transformed the availability of
information and disrupted traditional social and
economic structures, from intellectual property
and trade in goods and services to privacy, political
debate and social mores.
Sustainable development is widely seen as
a challenge that must be met. ICTs and the
Internet are widely seen as opportunities to
bypass historic development constraints. Both
have impacts at global, national and local levels.
Both are already changing the way we think
and act as citizens and in communities, in policy
and practice. Both will have radical impacts on
economic and social change in all countries
over the next two to three decades—indeed,
they are likely to have more impact than any
other long-term changes that we see around
us. These impacts will be general, affecting
developed and developing countries; industrial,
post-industrial and agrarian economies; and
nations and regions in the global North and
South.
There has, however, been surprisingly little
interaction between policy-makers and activists
concerned with sustainable development and
with ICT/Internet public policy. This is not
because there are few linkages: as this paper
will illustrate, there are many complex linkages
between them. In the words of an earlier IISD
report on sustainable development and the
Internet:
In a broad view, sustainable development cannot
be conceived without global communications
and knowledge exchange. The closer we consider
today’s communications channels, the more
aware we become of the paramount importance
of the Internet to the flow of information and
knowledge around the world. The Internet
governance debate, which includes issues of
access, multistakeholder participation, openness
and security, among others, is essential for global
communication and knowledge exchange, in that
its outcomes will affect our ability to manage the
social, environmental and economic aspects of
sustainable development. (MacLean, Andjelkovich
& Vetter, 2007, p. 1).
ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm
The problem in leveraging this linkage lies more
with the different interests of those concerned
with sustainable development and with ICTs and
Internet public policy, and with the fact that the
issues tend to be dealt with in different forums,
among which there has been little interchange.
IISD believes this gap in understanding and
worldview between sustainable development
and the ICT/Internet world is detrimental to
both, and to the developmental outcomes with
which both are concerned. Information and
communication technologies and the Internet
play an increasingly important part in production
and exchange, in social organization and in
individual behaviour. As a significant economic
sector, they impact directly, in their own right,
on economic and environmental sustainability.
As agents of change in society, economy and
culture generally, they disrupt many of the
assumptions that have been made about the
sustainability of current economic, social and
environmental structures and alter projections
that have been made about these for the future.
Sustainable development thinking needs to be
revised to accommodate the increased and still-
increasing impact of ICTs and Internet.
This paper summarizes some of the main issues
concerned here, and calls for greater dialogue and
interaction between sustainable development
and ICT/Internet public policy-makers and
activists, based upon a greater understanding of
these different domains and of their complexities.
The ICT and Internet sector also needs to reflect
on the importance of sustainability within its own
development. ICTs are increasingly fundamental
to the organization of economic production and
exchange, to social dynamics and to the exchange
of information and other resources. The ways in
5
which communication networks evolve—their
governance, technology and economics—and
in which services and information resources
are made available over them affect both the
quality and the sustainability of economic,
social and environmental development. The
ICT sector has a responsibility to consider that
impact: to maximize the opportunities that it
provides (e.g., for poverty reduction, economic
opportunity and personal empowerment) and
to minimize negative impacts (e.g., in waste
generation and greenhouse gas emissions).
Governments, businesses and other stake-
holders, including standard-setting agencies
and user communities, all have an important
part to play in this reconsideration.
This paper summarizes some of the main
issues concerned here and calls for greater
dialogue and interaction between sustainable
development and ICT/Internet public policy-
makers and activists, based upon a greater
understanding of these different domains and
of their complexities.
Sections 2 and 3 of the paper seek to define the
ground for future dialogue. Section 2 summarizes
the meaning of sustainable development as it
has evolved since the World Commission on
Environment and Development in 1987. Section
3 summarizes the changes that have occurred
in and as a result of the evolution of ICTs and
Internet and outlines the impact these have on
our understanding of sustainable development.
Sections 4 and 5 examine the current state of
thinking on the relationship between these
policy domains in the crucial area of economic
transition. Section 4 considers what has become
known as the “digital economy,” while Section 5
looks at what is known as the “green economy”;
both are paradigms that have become prominent
in the separate worlds of ICT/internet policy and
sustainable development.
Finally, Sections 6 and 7 consider the implications
of the discussion for both sustainable
development and ICT/Internet policy domains,
propose an approach to furthering analysis
of the relationship between them, and make
recommendations for improving understanding,
dialogue and cooperation.

Internet governance and Internet public policy

The term “Internet governance” has been widely used since the World Summit on the
Information Society to describe not just the technical management and coordination of
the Internet itself (which is sometimes called “narrow Internet governance”), but also the
relationship between the Internet and mainstream public policy issues that are affected by it
(sometimes called “broad Internet governance”). Both of these types of issues are discussed,
for example, in the Internet Governance Forum.

IISD believes that the use of the term “Internet governance” for this wide range of issues
is increasingly inappropriate, particularly where issues fall primarily in other public policy
arenas. IISD therefore prefers to use the term “Internet public policy” for this wider range of
issues.

6 ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm

 Defining Sustainable Development
2 The World Commission on
Environment and Development—
the Brundtland Commission—defines
sustainable development in its 1987 report as
pollution and other negative impacts on
the environment, mitigating the effects
of industrialization and human activity,
and seeking to achieve sustainable use
follows: of resources in the interest of future
generations (WSSD, 2002a, ch. 1, para.2).
Development that meets the needs of the present
without compromising the ability of future generations This relationship is sometimes illustrated either as
to meet their own needs. It contains within it two key pillars or through a Venn diagram as here:
concepts:

n the concept of ‘needs,’ in particular the

essential needs of the world‘s poor, to which
overriding priority should be given; and

n the idea of limitations imposed by the state

of technology and social organization, on
the environment’s ability to meet present and
future needs. (WCED 1987, part 1, section 2,
para. 1).

Although the definition of sustainable development

emerged from an international enquiry into
the relationship between environment and
development, it is not concerned primarily with
the environment but with the sustainability of
the overall developmental context. This usually
comprises three main elements:

n economic development – reducing and
seeking to eradicate income poverty,
achieving higher levels of prosperity and
enabling continued gains in economic
welfare;
n social development – reducing and
seeking to eradicate other dimensions of
poverty, improving the quality of education,
health, housing and other aspects of the
welfare of individuals and communities, and
enhancing the quality of social interaction,
engagement and empowerment;
n environmental protection – reducing
Diagram adapted from Barbier, E. (1987). The
concept of sustainable economic development.
Environmental Conservation, 14(2): 101–110.
Development, in this context, is not a matter merely
for developing countries, as the term is sometimes
used. It is about development at all levels, from the
family, through local communities, regions and
nations, to the planet as a whole. Sustainability needs
to be a priority in all countries—post-industrial and
industrial as well as developing countries—and in
the international system that links them.
The 2005 UN World Summit, which reviewed the
Millennium Development Goals, described the

ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm 7

three pillars or circles of “economic development,
social development and environmental protection”
as three “interdependent and mutually reinforcing
pillars” of sustainable development (United Nations
General Assembly, 2005, para. 48). Some analysts
of sustainability add one or two additional aspects
of development to this tripartite framework. These
are:
n cultural diversity – the continuance of
diverse human cultures from past to future
within a context of the globalization of
communications, economy and society and
the more intensive intercultural interactions
that result; and
n governance – the institutional mechanisms,
rules and norms that encompass decision-
making and behaviour by governments,
businesses and citizens, the interactions
among these stakeholders and among
different policy domains.
The sustainability of development results not
from any individual part of this framework—from
economic growth, for example—but from the
framework as a whole: from the cumulative impact
of all three (or five) components, from the inter-
actions among them and from the system-wide
outcomes that result from these. Sustainable
development, in other words, looks at development
holistically, rather than from one dimension of
the development ecosystem. This is often
misunderstood.
The Brundtland Commission (1987) recommended
seven critical actions needed to ensure good quality
of life for people around the world (WCED, 1987, ch.
2, para. 28):
n revive growth;
n change the quality of growth;
n meet essential needs and aspirations for
8 ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm
jobs, food, energy, water and sanitation;
n ensure a sustainable level of population;
n conserve and enhance the resource base;
n reorient technology and manage risk; and
n include and combine environment and
economic considerations in decision
making.
These factors place a demand on us to:
n Produce differently by increasing efficiency
and reducing material used in production.
The goal is to quadruple resource
productivity so that wealth is doubled, and
resource use is halved.
n Consume differently by developing policies
that promote consumption patterns
that reduce the ecological footprint of
development while meeting the needs of
all people so they enjoy a good quality of
life.
n Organize differently by engaging all
stakeholders and improving public
participation in all steps of planning,
implementation and evaluation of policies
and actions; reducing global subsidies
and applying some of these to sustainable
development.
The Brundtland Commission’s definition of
sustainable development has been elaborated over
the years into a set of fundamental principles,
notably at two UN Summits, the Earth Summits,
held in Rio de Janeiro in 1987 and in Johannesburg
in 2002. The consensus arising from these global
forums can be summarized as follows (IISD, 2010):
n The goal of sustainable development policy
is human well-being for people everywhere,
measured in terms of factors such as secur-
 ity, satisfaction of material needs, health,
social relations, freedom of choice and
action, and following a principle of equity
and fairness. To meet this goal, it is necessary
to generate and distribute wealth in ways
that reduce poverty and provide a decent
standard of living to people everywhere.
n This can only be done in the long run
through policies and strategies that balance
economic growth with social development
and environmental sustainability, as well
as applying principles of global systems
thinking in policy and strategy development
with a view to mitigating unpredictable
and drastic consequences that may result
from triggers in other parts of the system.
n Technology and social organization play
critical roles in achieving the long-term
balance between human development and
the natural environment that is essential for
sustainable development.
In 1992, the Earth Summit in Rio adopted
Agenda 21, a global plan of action for sustainable
development that incorporated environmental,
economic and social concerns into a single policy
framework. Agenda 21 contains proposals and
recommendations for action on a wide range of
issues, including resource management, wasteful
consumption, poverty mitigation, biodiversity,
protecting the oceans and atmosphere and
promoting sustainable agricultural practices.
Since the Earth Summit in Rio, there have been
several expansions and strengthening of its
outcomes at several UN sessions, notably at the
two Earth Summits. Sustainable development
was a significant theme in the 2005 review of
the Millennium Development Goals, and is
reiterated in other UN summit declarations. The
United Nations General Assembly has continued to
reaffirm the objectives of Agenda 21, emphasizing
the importance of five thematic clusters, including
transport, chemicals, waste management,
ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm
mining and changing patterns of production and
consumption. Climate change has also come to the
fore, as the most crucial environmental challenge
facing the world community.
Progress towards sustainability, however, remains
difficult to achieve—as the 2009 Climate Change
Conference in Copenhagen so clearly demonstrated.
It requires both international coordination and
action by individual governments, businesses and
citizens. A third UN Earth Summit will be held in
Brazil in 2012. It will focus on two major themes: the
green economy in the context of poverty eradication
and sustainable development and the institutional
framework for sustainable development. The
Summit will seek to balance economic, social and
environmental dimensions of sustainability, at
local, national, regional and international levels.
In the meantime, the challenges involved are
being addressed by a High-Level Panel on Global
Sustainability appointed by the UN Secretary-
General.
Progress towards sustainability, however, remains
difficult to achieve—as the 2009 Climate Change
Conference in Copenhagen so clearly demonstrated.
Information and communication technologies are
increasingly important in this context, but there has
been too little interaction between sustainability and
ICT domains. The 2002 Johannesburg Earth Summit,
for instance, acknowledged the value of ICTs “as
tools to increase the frequency of communication
and the sharing of experience and knowledge,”
(WSSD, 2002b, para. 112) but discussion about ICTs
in sustainability forums and about sustainability in
forums concerned with ICTs remains limited and
shallow. Section 3 explains why that needs to be
addressed.
9
 The Impact of New Technology, ICTs and
3 the Internet on Sustainable Development
A sustainable development approach,
as described above, is necessarily holistic. Analyzing
the impact of economic, social and environmental
trends, and the interactions between them, is only
possible from a basis of thorough, researched
understanding both of present circumstances and
of likely changes in those circumstances.
Technology has long played a crucial part in
economic and social development. The level of
technology has always limited what is technically
possible or economically viable, while the evolution
of technology has continually raised those
thresholds of possibility and viability.
One of the principal concepts contained in the
Brundtland Commission’s 1987 definition of
sustainable development is “the idea of limitations
imposed by the state of technology and social
organisation on the environment’s ability to meet
present and future needs.” (WCED, 1987, part 1,
Sec. 2, para. 1). It is widely accepted that there is
a strong linkage between technology and social
organization, and that development has taken place
through stages in which technological innovation
has led to economic and social transformation;
this is sometimes described as a succession of
transitions from hunter/gatherer, to agricultural, to
industrial, to information/knowledge societies.
Refinements of this perception have called
attention to the role throughout history of general
purpose technologies (GPTs)—technologies
that affect all aspects of economies, such as the
steam engine, electricity and the automobile—in
transforming economic and social organization.
ICTs—telecommunications, computing and the
Internet—are clearly recognizable as general
purpose technologies within this definition. Some
analysts have also focused on the specific role
of communication technologies in shaping social
10 ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm
organization, norms and even laws.
These perceptions of the relationship among
technology, economy and society are not
deterministic. They do not imply that technological
change necessarily leads to certain outcomes.
However, it is clear that the state of technology
offers possibilities and creates limitations that shape
the choices available to societies—and the actors
within them—for creating and distributing the
various forms of wealth that are enabled by them
and by the other economic sectors they affect.
It is also widely accepted that at each stage in their
evolution and of consequential social and economic
change, technological developments have had both
positive and negative impacts on the economy,
society and environment. In particular, they have
had both positive and negative impacts on the
foundation of sustainability, that is, the environ-
ment’s ability to meet present and future needs. In
the case of industrial technology and the forms of
economic and social organization that developed
around it, it is clear that many of these impacts on
sustainability have been negative on balance and
that the current outcomes of industrialization as it
has evolved are not sustainable.
For the past four decades, much discussion about
sustainable development has centred on the
question of what new forms of economic and
social organization are needed to ensure that the
environment is able to meet present and future
needs of a world population that is expected to reach
nine to ten billion by 2050, a substantial portion
of which will live in poverty. Over the past two
decades, there has been particular interest in new
technologies that may have the potential to enable
environmentally sustainable forms of economic and
social organization, in the context of a growing world
population, without requiring an end to growth.
These technologies include new forms of renewable
energy, technologies for cleaning existing carbon-
based energy technologies, materials technologies,
biotechnologies, nanotechnologies and information
and communication technologies (ICTs).
The potential of these technologies suggests that
it may be time to add a fourth circle of sustainable
development to the three circles in the Venn
diagram presented in Section 2—a technological
circle that recognizes the role of ICTs (alongside
other technologies) in economic and social
transformation. Sections 4 and 5 of this paper
explore in more detail why this may be the case.
Communications in their widest sense—the
exchange of information and resources between
individuals and groups—has long been understood
to have a central role in social and economic
development. The extraordinarily rapid develop-
ment of information and communication
technologies and services since the 1990s, however,
has revised the way in which development
economists and agencies have viewed
communications. Development agencies such
as UNESCO and the World Bank began to pay
explicit attention to ICTs in the mid-1990s, and the
UN system recognized them through two World
Summits on the Information Society held in 2003
and 2005. Many governments, in both industrial
and developing countries, have since introduced
national ICT strategies that seek to exploit the
economic and social value that they perceive
lies in information technology. The Internet has
increasingly been at the heart of these approaches.
The impact of ICTs on the ways in which economies
and societies work is profound and visible at all
levels, from global trade and culture to relationships
within the family. For example:
n Information technology has enabled and
increasingly enables major changes in the
production of goods and services, including
the globalization of product development,
ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm
manufacturing and labour markets; the
displacement of labour by technology; and
the expansion of service sectors.
n It increasingly enables the digitalization
and virtualization of some traditional
goods (such as books and music) and the
individualization of some traditional services
(such as banking, travel and insurance).
n It has enabled the creation of a new range
of business opportunities within the ICT
sector itself, from software design to street
corner resale of telephone airtime.
n It disrupts traditional governance
arrangements among state, business and
consumer, including those relating to
taxation and intellectual property. It also
provides opportunities for new forms of
administration, marketing and service
delivery through which governments and
businesses can interact with citizens, and
through which citizens engage with them
when they wish to do so.
n It greatly increases the extent to which
individuals can access information,
entertainment and other resources,
including those which have been restricted
by law—but also enables new forms of
tracking of individual behaviour by the
state, businesses and non-governmental
actors.
n It enables individuals to publish material
of all kinds—from personal information to
political comment, “citizen journalism” to
rumour-mongering and defamation, music-
making to pornography—without the
economic, political and social constraints
that have hitherto prevailed.
n It has enabled and increasingly enables
the capacity to communicate immediately
at a distance—facilitating the exchange
of information and maintenance of social
11
 contact within families, social networks and
diasporic communities, greatly increasing
the pace with which news (and rumour)
spread and influence behaviour.
n It facilitates networking between
individuals and organizations, within and
beyond national boundaries, enabling
more extensive and diverse forms of
organizational partnerships—from new
forms of marketing to new forms of
solidarity amongst the marginalized, from
social networking forums such as Facebook
to criminal organizations.
All of these trends shift the landscape that
underpins our thinking about sustainability. For
some commentators, these trends amount to the
reconfiguration of society—to the establishment
of a post-industrial Information Society, and/or of
a Network Society in which new forms of social
relationship displace historic relationships among
citizens and between citizens and the state. While
most commentators regard the balance of outcomes
as positive, many are concerned by aspects of the
economic, social, cultural and political changes that
are taking place.
These trends have been enabled by rapid changes
in the costs and capabilities of underlying
communications technologies and networks.
Within the past twenty years, the emphasis of
telecommunications has shifted from voice to data
and from fixed to mobile services. Similar changes
are underway from PSTN (public switched telephone
network) to IP (Internet Protocol) transmission and
from narrowband to broadband networks and
access. Communications networks that once offered
a small range of basic services to most consumers
now offer a very wide range of services, including
some such as shopping and banking in which the
consumer experience has been historically distinct
from communications media. The provision of
communications services has also largely moved
from the public to the private sector.
12 ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm
The advent, growth and spread of the Internet have
been particularly important here, and has received
most attention in analysis of future prospects. For
many, it is the Internet that encapsulates the capacity
of new technology to disrupt historic ways of doing
things and alter balances of power between rich
and poor, state and citizen, business and consumer.
Not only that, its development has taken place
largely outside the control or management of
governments, its standards being set by autonomous
groups of experts operating through consensus, its
commercial development being led by a wide range
of businesses from traditional telecommunications
operators to innovative start-ups that can grow from
backroom enterprise to stock market leadership in a
handful of years. Increasing access to the Internet on
mobile devices seems almost certain to accelerate
the growth in its importance—and society’s
dependence on it—over the next decade.
These technological developments have had and
continue to have profound impacts on human
behaviour and social and economic organization.
Most importantly, they continue to change rapidly
and unpredictably. Very few observers in the
1980s would have predicted the extent to which
mobile devices now dominate telephony or the
way in which the Internet has evolved from a niche
resource for academics and computer scientists
to the leading global source of information and
entertainment that it is today. Phenomena like
social networking—now very widespread—were
only beginning to appear at the time of the World
Summit on the Information Society in 2005. As
well as shifting the ground beneath sustainability,
therefore, ICTs are also shifting the way in which
the ground is shifting. Understanding their impact
on sustainability requires constant observation and
analysis.
Yet there is a real paradigm gap between
individuals and institutions that are concerned with
sustainability and those which are concerned with
ICTs. Expertise is insufficiently shared; international
 discourse is insufficiently open; and there are few
opportunities to explore the interface in any depth.
This must change. The impact of new technology
needs to be integrated much more thoroughly
in our understanding of sustainable development.
And sustainable development principles also need
to be included in thinking about the ways in which
ICTs affect economic, social and environmental
change. The question here is how this might be best
achieved.
A valuable framework for analyzing impacts on
sustainability was developed by the Forum for
the Future in its 2002 report on The impact of
ICT on sustainable development for the European
Information Technology Observatory. At the heart
of this framework is a simple matrix that can be
illustrated thus:
1st order effects 2nd order effects
3 order effects
Economic sustainability
Social sustainability
Evironmental sustainability
In this matrix, “ first order effects” refers to the
immediate and direct effects of a particular factor
on sustainability (in this case of ICTs); “second order
effects” to indirect impacts; and “third order effects”
to societal impacts taking place over a longer
period of time. The matrix can be applied to the
interface between any sector or policy domain and
sustainable development, but is particularly helpful
to understanding the impact of ICTs on sustainable
development. The table as a whole can be applied
to ICTs in general, broad areas of ICT development
such as the Internet or broadband networks,
specific innovations such as cloud computing, or
applications such as social networking. Individual
cells can also be analyzed in depth, while the results
of analysis can also be summarized, cell by cell, as a
balance between positive and negative outcomes.
ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm
It also enables analysis of changes, at each of these
levels, over time. We will return to this matrix in
Section 6.
There is not space here to go into each of the
three pillars of sustainable development in depth,
though it is important to emphasize that each is
equally important in understanding sustainability.
The relationship between ICTs, the Internet and
climate change, however, can be used to illustrate
the complexity of this set of relationships—and
in particular, the way in which ICTs can contribute
both positively and negatively to sustainability.
The first order effects of ICTs on climate change
are both strong and negative. According to a
report published by the industry lobby group
GeSI (the Global e-Sustainability Initiative), the
contribution of ICTs to greenhouse
rd
gas (greenhouse gas) emissions
is currently between 2 per cent
and 3 per cent, and will grow
faster than that of any other
economic sector, at a compound
annual growth rate of 6 per
cent between now and 2020.
Total greenhouse gas emissions
resulting from ICTs will rise from 0.53
gigatonnes (of CO2 equivalent) to 1.43 gigatonnes
between 2002 and 2020. This increase arises
primarily from the extension of networks, from
the increased availability and more frequent use
of devices: that is to say, from increased access and
from increased reliance on access and use of ICT
resources. A significant proportion of the increase
is also due to data centres required to manage
Internet traffic. This growth in greenhouse gas
emissions resulting from ICTs is effectively certain,
though it can be partly addressed by mitigation—
for example, by changes in equipment standards
that make networks and devices more energy-
efficient (see Section 6).
The second order effects of ICTs on climate change
are more often publicized, generally considered
13
positive, but much less certain. These fall into two
main categories.
First, ICTs can be used to increase the efficiency of
other industries, most notably power generation and
distribution (through the introduction of what are
known as “smart grids”) and logistics in sectors such
as transport. GeSI estimates that the potential positive
impact of such ICT-enhanced resource management
could considerably exceed the negative first order
effects described above. However, these emissions
savings are very far from certain, and depend on
decisions to invest in such approaches being taken
outside the ICT sector itself, by the managements of
major utilities, manufacturing and service businesses.
Only a proportion of these gains are therefore likely to
be realized. In addition, as they result from decisions
taken by a few large businesses that already have the
necessary ICT infrastructure, they cannot properly be
juxtaposed against first order effects that result from
increased access and usage by individual citizens and
other businesses.
The second category of second order effects is more
directly related to wider access and usage. This is the
impact of dematerialization, that is, the displacement
of physical with virtual activity. While dematerialization
has been significant in some areas—such as music
distribution—it has been less significant to date in
others, notably telecommuting, and it is difficult to
predict how extensive it will be in future.
Dematerialization also illustrates the complexities
of environmental impact assessment of ICTs. While
telecommuting, for example, may reduce direct
energy consumption, by substituting home working
for travel to work, this does not necessarily result
in a net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
Home working, for example, may lead to higher
energy consumption in the home or to greater
use of personal transport for shopping and leisure
at the expense of public transport previously used
for commuting. Complex modelling is needed
here, rather than simplistic assumptions about what
might happen.
14 ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm
Third order effects of ICTs on climate change are
those that result or will result from the kind of large-
scale behavioural and social structural changes that
were described earlier in this section. Innovations
such as social networking, home-working and home-
shopping do not just have immediate direct impacts
on individual behaviour. They also have longer-
term direct and indirect impacts on the ways in
which societies and organizations work, for example
in patterns of expenditure and consumption; in
interactions among citizens and between those
citizens and their governments, employers and
other businesses; and in the relationship between
work and leisure. Large-scale social trends of this
kind have profound long-term implications for
economic, social and environmental sustainability.
However, third order effects of this kind are difficult
to predict.
The next two sections look in more detail at some of
the ways in which economic structures are changing
in response to ICTs and the Internet, and to the
need for greater environmental sustainability. These
sections are concerned, first, with the development
of the “digital economy,” and second with what has
become known as the “green economy.” Policy-
makers in some international forums (including
the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development [OECD]), governments and academic
institutions are beginning to analyze the conjunction
between these two trends in economic development.
They see significant potential gains arising from
greater engagement between them. IISD shares
the view that there are substantial gains that can
be made. However, these gains are only likely to
be realized through much greater interaction in
policy development and governance, and greater
awareness of potential synergies and conflicts within
the business community and civil society. Identifying
the gains that can be achieved and the institutional
mechanisms required to bring them to fruition are
important challenges to be addressed in the run-up
to the third Earth Summit in 2012.
 The complex cloud

The data centres, which enable content on the Internet, consume large amounts of electricity.
Because much of this is generated by burning fossil fuels, they also produce significant quantities of
greenhouse gas. A study for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated that, in 2006, U.S.
data centres consumed 61 B kwh of electricity—1.5 per cent of all the electricity used in the country
(EPA, 2007). A 2008 study of the environmental impacts of ICTs written for the Global e-Sustainability
Initiative estimated that in 2002 the global footprint of data centres was 76 megatonnes of CO2
equivalent, and that this amount would more than triple to 259 megatonnes by 2020, the fastest
rate of emissions growth in the ICT sector as a whole (GeSI, 2008, p. 02/20).

Two main strategies have been employed to reduce the carbon footprint of data centres: a shift
to the use of renewable energy sources and a shift away from individually owned and operated
centres toward shared facilities where information processing and storage are provided virtually by
“cloud computing” operators—which, it is hoped, will achieve greater efficiency and reduced cost
to the environment. Recently, there has been growing interest in a third approach that combines
these two strategies in the concept of “green clouds.” This interest has been particularly strong in
countries that have abundant sources of renewable energy and cold climates that help cool data
centres at relatively low cost.

As part of a Green IT project undertaken by CANARIE, a Canadian high-capacity research and

education network operator, IISD examined different options for creating zero-carbon data centres
at a number of Canadian universities by relocating their existing facilities, which were on-campus
and on-grid, to remote sources of renewable energy. The different options were assessed in terms
of the business case for relocation, assuming that carbon credits could be used to offset relocation
costs, and of the policy issues raised by relocation.

The results of the study (IISD, 2010) suggest that the “green cloud” option provides the strongest
business case. However, it also raised the most complex set of policy issues for university
administrators, researchers, funding agencies and public policy-makers. In Canada, as in other
countries with advanced digital economies, there is a well-defined legal and regulatory framework
for providing access to information, protecting the privacy of individuals, ensuring information and
security, and protecting intellectual property rights that will need to be extended and applied to
cloud computing. Even when these challenges are fully addressed, relocating data centres may
not be the best way of reducing emissions. Building new facilities in remote areas is itself carbon-
intensive, while surplus heat in urban areas can be reused, for example to heat classrooms and office
buildings. The IISD/CANARIE study suggests that all of these factors will need to be examined and
that new issues will need to be considered, as the Internet moves into the age of cloud computing.
This illustrates the complexity of sustainability where ICTs are concerned, and the importance of
subjecting assumptions and expectations to full impact analysis.

ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm 15

 The Digital Economy
4 The “digital economy” is a relatively
new term in policy discourse, having
come into vogue in the past few years
in countries such as Australia, the U.K. and Canada
to refer to a phenomenon previously known as “the
information economy” (1970s), the “knowledge
economy” (1980s), the “new economy” (1990s) and
“the Internet economy” (2000s). These countries,
and some others, notably in East Asia, have been
engaged in developing digital economy strategies
aimed at exploiting the value of ICTs for economic
growth and/or placing ICT-enabled growth at the
centre of their future economic aspirations. A small
number of low-income developing countries, such
as Rwanda, have also identified ICTs as the lead
sectors in their economic development programs,
though most national ICT strategies are concerned
more with the contribution that ICTs can make to
economies that will continue to be led by established
agricultural, raw material, manufacturing and export
sectors.
The basic idea underlying the digital economy is that
the development, diffusion, application and use of
ICTs—including computers, telecommunications,
digital media and the Internet—has underlain and
enabled the changes that have taken place over
recent decades in global economic, social and
political structures, including the distribution of
wealth and power within and between countries,
the nature of work and the location of employment,
social interaction, cultural expression, and structures
of governance in the public and private sectors. In
this context, the digital economy, whether already
current or anticipated, is seen as the post-industrial
successor to the industrial era. ICTs are seen as
the latest GPT (General Purpose Technologies),
following electricity, steam and a small number of
earlier technologies that have had transformative
effects on economies and societies.
16 ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm
The digital economy is therefore a subset of broader
concepts, such as the “information age” or “the glo-
bal information society,” that attempt to compre-
hend the total set of transformations that have
been enabled by ICTs and the interactions between
and among them. The digital economy concept,
however, focuses explicitly on the economic impact
of ICTs: on the structures that generate wealth
through the production and exchange of goods
and services and the resources that are related to
these. The nature of the digital economy is such that
many of these resources—such as digital literacy—
have social as well as economic dimensions. As a
result, the relatively sharp boundaries that existed
in the twentieth century between economic and
social policy, and between the public and private
spheres, are becoming fuzzy. Old ways of doing
things, including governance, are not necessarily
sustainable.
Although there is no single definition of the digital
economy, policy discourse on it tends to focus
on a number of defining characteristics. These
characteristics appear to differentiate the digital
economy from the industrial and service-based
economies that typified industrial countries in the
twentieth century, as well as from the predominantly
agricultural and resource-based economies of
non-industrial countries. The following points are
typically found within this discourse:
n The sector that produces ICT goods and
services can be broadly defined to include
computer goods and services, including
databases and applications software;
telecommunications equipment, networks
and services; broadcasting and other
electronic content media; and Internet
goods and services. In a digital economy,
this is an important sector of activity
in its own right, generating 5 to 10 per
cent of GDP, accounting for a significant
 proportion of research and development,
and providing a substantial proportion of
jobs (especially at the higher end of the
labour market).
n In a digital economy, as well as being widely
diffused throughout all economic sectors,
ICTs make a substantial indirect contribu-
tion to national wealth. Economic analysis
suggests that, in the last two decades,
there has been a significant relationship in
both North America and Europe between
levels of investment in ICTs and gains in
productivity and competitiveness at the
level of firms, sectors and (over a longer time
period) national economies. Two important
provisos should be noted, however. These
impacts are far from instantaneous: they
take time to work through economic
systems, particularly at a national level. And
they are not inevitable: the benefits of ICT
investment are only realized if other systems
adapt to make effective use of them—
for example, through the restructuring
of management and employment in the
firm and through the introduction of new
educational curricula and labour market
norms within society as a whole.
quality of existing products, services
and production processes, as well as to
the development of new production
processes and new products and services.
Virtualization and dematerialization play
a part in this, creating new product and
service markets but also displacing some
traditional economic sectors—as does the
displacement of labour by technology.
Achieving these impacts often depends
on the restructuring of established
management hierarchies and relationships
among management, employees, suppliers
and consumers.
n An important emerging feature of the
digital economy is the increasing amount
of innovation that is being generated by

n In a digital economy, ICTs also tend to be

widely diffused throughout society—not
just in business, but also in government,
in the provision of education, health care
and other public services, and in the home.
In some countries, ICTs have enabled the
private provision of services that were
previously provided by governments.

n Digital economies tend to have high

degrees of innovation and creativity
relative to other economies. ICT-enabled
innovations are likely to foster gains in
productivity and competitiveness, leading
to improvements to the efficiency and

ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm 17

 individuals, including ICT/Internet users,
who previously would have been con-
sidered customers, clients or subscribers
of goods and service producers. These
innovators now contribute to the digital
economy either directly—for example,
through various forms of user-generated
content (such as blogging, social
networking and “citizen journalism”) or
indirectly (through “crowdsourcing,” open
innovation and “citizen science”).
n Digital economies tend to be open
economies. Along with transportation,
ICTs have been principal enablers of the
globalization that has transformed the
structure of the world economy over
the past half century. ICTs have made it
possible for multinational enterprises to
build and manage global value chains
for the production, distribution and
management of goods and services,
locating different activities within this
value chain where these processes can
be provided most efficiently or cost-
effectively. New structures of global
production have been facilitated by
international, regional and bilateral
agreements that have opened the
markets of participating countries
to trade and investment from other
countries. Agreements regarding trade
and investment in ICTs, particularly in
telecommunication services, have been
instrumental in supporting the growth of
a digital economy at the global level.
n Finally, digital economies also tend to be
open internally, in the sense that they
are generally managed through policies
that seek to promote innovation and
competition by private companies and
individuals, and to minimize the role of
government regulation both in the ICT
sector and elsewhere in the economy.
Many within the Internet world identify
its non-governmental—or perhaps post-
18 ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm
governmental—governance framework
as a prime factor in enabling creativity
and innovation, and thereby enterprise
and empowerment.
The established statistical frameworks and
classifications used to measure economic activity
were designed for industrial economies. While they
do a good job of measuring production, trade and
consumption in ICT goods and services, they have
difficulty capturing the value added throughout the
economy (and society) by ICTs as GPTS, in terms of
efficiency, productivity and innovation. They also
have difficulty quantifying the value resulting from
flows and exchanges of various forms of digital
content, particularly those that are non-rivalrous and
non-excludable (“public goods” in the economic
sense of the term), and in assessing the contribution
of different factors of production in digital economy
performance, particularly those that are intangible
(such as culture and creativity).
Likewise, the indicators that have traditionally been
used to measure the state of communications
development in a country (such as the number of
connections, pieces of equipment, or subscribers
for different classes of services), while still a useful
beginning, do not provide a satisfactory basis for
measuring activity within the digital economy or for
addressing issues such as employment, changes in
domestic and leisure activity, the rebalancing (and
hybridization) of work and leisure, or changes in
social mores.
Over the past decade, a number of multi-indicator
indexes have been constructed to try to measure
and compare the digital economy performance of
different countries. These indices combine indicators
that measure such things as the availability and
affordability of digital technologies; national capacity
to use them, as measured for example by levels of
educational attainment; the policy and regulatory
environment governing the ICT sector; and the
levels of use of digital technologies throughout the
economy (and society). Examples of these digital
economy indices include the Economist e-Readiness
Index, the World Economic Forum Networked
Readiness Index and the ITU’S ICT Development
Index. Work is ongoing, for example at the OECD,
to construct better tools for measuring the digital
economy and analyzing the impact of different
policy options. However, more still needs to be done
to establish links between this work and sustainable
development analysis.
Although these measurement tools are imperfect,
there is strong macro-level evidence that countries’
levels of digital economy development correlate,
to a significant degree, with their overall levels of
economic and human development as measured
by World Bank and United Nations indices. There
are also sectoral studies that suggest a positive
link between infrastructure investment and levels
of GDP growth (for example, a recent World Bank
report on the economic impact of broadband [Kim,
Kelly & Raja, 2010], national examples (such as
the role of the ICT producing sector in the rise
of Asian economies), and micro-level studies that
support the central notion of the digital economy
concept, that ICTs are transformative technologies
that support development everywhere, not just in
industrialized countries.
These studies should still be treated with care.
They are at present only partial and inconclusive.
Correlations between infrastructure investment
and GDP growth rates do not in themselves imply a
causal relationship, or a causal relationship that runs
from investment to growth rather than vice versa.
Rapid digitalization of the economy of the kind seen
in South Korea may not be replicable in societies
that have very different types of government, levels
of educational attainment or available capital. Nor
is the experience of first movers such as South
Korea necessarily replicable in countries where the
relevant communications market develops much
later. Microstudies are notoriously dangerous guides
for macro-level policy, and positive experiences
are much more likely to be reported than those
that are negative. While there is good evidence
to suggest that more digital economies are
ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm
economically more dynamic and successful than
more traditional industrial economies in the current
world environment, we need to know much more
about the contributory and contextual factors that
foster or inhibit this if we are to have confidence in
detailed policy prescriptions.
Over the past ten to fifteen years, international,
regional and national bodies have adopted
policies and implemented programs to support
the growth of ICTs in developing countries. The
adoption of national ICT strategies has been
supported by multilateral and bilateral financing
and development organizations, though it has
often been poorly integrated into other aspects
of national development planning. Both within
and outside intergovernmental frameworks, non-
governmental organizations have assisted in the
development of digital economies—as have some
private companies, even outside the confines of
their direct commercial interests.
Over the past decade, a number of multi-
indicator indexes have been constructed
to try to measure and compare the digital
economy performance of different countries.
The outcomes of these interventions are variable.
While there is clear evidence and common conviction
that the development of digital economy capacities
should be part of the development policies and
plans of developing countries, there is no “magic
bullet,” no “one size fits all” prescription for success.
The challenges that developing countries face in
the transition to becoming digital economies are
relatively greater, on every relevant scale, than those
facing industrial countries. Primarily agricultural
societies cannot be transformed overnight into
primarily service economies—nor can the world as a
whole replace food production and manufacturing
19
 with digital services. All
economies will remain, to
a greater or lesser degree,
mixed. Responding to these
challenges must begin
with recognition that each
society needs to respond
to the opportunities of the
digital economy in ways
that are most appropriate
for its economic and
social context, enabling
greater prosperity that
is sustainable into the
medium term and
beyond.
The governance paradigm
that has shaped the
development of digital
economy policies has
emphasized the role of
private investment and
competitive market forces
in creating efficiency,
improving social welfare
and generating innovation. It
has sought to create an enabling environment in
which producers and consumers are free to develop
and use technologies, without being subject
to the kinds of regulatory controls that typified
traditional telecommunications and broadcasting.
At the same time, the prevailing ethos within
the digital industry, especially the Internet, has
sought to protect personal rights and consumer
interests, while still combating the new forms of
crime that have grown with the digital economy;
to promote information and network security; and
to support public resources that are important
sources of innovation in the digital economy (such
as education and research).
The principles guiding policy-makers within this
overall paradigm have tended to emphasize
freedom of expression and access to information,
20 ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm
consistent with the rights of others and with social
order. When applied to the digital economy, these
liberal democratic principles have provided a
foundation for policies that have emphasized the
creation by governments of a legal and regulatory
environment that enables innovation in the
production of ICT goods and services and consumer
welfare through the operation of markets. This
market-oriented approach, in turn, has shaped
policy responses to critical issues for the digital
economy, such as achieving affordable access to
broadband infrastructure; developing digital skills
and literacy; promoting the application of digital
technologies throughout the economy, society and
government; ensuring confidence and trust in the
online marketplace; enhancing information and
network security; updating intellectual property
rights; and supporting research and innovation.
The issues on the digital economy policy agenda
are complex, both individually and through the
interconnections between them and other eco-
nomic sectors. Because they are rooted in a relatively
small number of fundamental social and economic
approaches and structures that are widely accepted
in countries with advanced digital economies, the
framework policies that have been developed to
manage this agenda have been relatively successful
in balancing the needs and interests of different
stakeholders—so far. However, this success has
been achieved in a policy environment that has,
until recently, been preoccupied with economic
issues above all others, and with the quest for
improvements to productivity and competitiveness
in a rapidly changing global environment. The
policy environment has begun to change, with
issues of security, sustainability and social change
now rising to prominence. It is an open question
whether the framework policies that have guided
the development of the digital economy to date
are capable of meeting these new challenges, or
whether the relationship between governance
principles, stakeholder needs and interests, and
the roles of governments and markets need to be
reformulated.
 The Green Economy
5 The concept of the “green economy”
is a much newer policy construct than that of
the digital economy. In the aftermath of the
2008–2009 financial and economic crises, it has
moved beyond the environmentalist community
into international prominence as a framework
for restoring economic growth while at the same
time responding to the challenge of climate
change and other major issues of environmental
sustainability.
In 2008 the United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP) launched a Green Economy
Initiative that will culminate in the publication
later in 2010 of a major Green Economy Report.
UNEP defines the greening of the economy as
“the process of reconfiguring businesses and
infrastructure to deliver better returns on natural,
human and economic capital investments, while at
the same time reducing greenhouse gas emissions,
extracting and using less natural resources,
creating less waste and reducing social disparities”
(UNEP, 2010). Also in 2008, the OECD began work
on an ambitious Green Growth strategy, which it
defines as “a way to pursue economic growth and
development, while preventing environmental
degradation, biodiversity loss, and unsustainable
natural resource use” (OECD, 2010, p.9).
Although their emergence on the international
agenda was triggered by the financial and
economic crises of 2008–2009, the concepts of
green growth and the green economy are products
of paradigm shifts that have taken place in recent
decades as economic, social and environmental
issues have begun to converge in the contexts
of globalization and the growing understanding
of the challenge posed by sustainability, and in
particular by climate change.
ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm
The impacts of economic and social development
on the environment and the consequent need to
conserve and protect its resources have played a
significant part in global and (in some countries)
national policy-making since at least the 1960s.
Until recently, however, environmental policy was
seen by many policy-makers as largely separate
from—and sometimes opposed to—mainstream
economic and social development thinking.
Over the past 10 to 20 years, the perspective
of sustainable development policy-makers on
environmental issues has significantly broadened.
In a sense, it has led to a position in which
development is now understood to mean
“sustainable growth” rather than “growth” per
se—as growth that is not sustainable in terms of
planetary resources is inherently unsustainable in
terms of the prosperity for which the goal of growth
is itself pursued. The following factors have been
important in this rethinking of “development.”
The impacts of economic and social development
on the environment and the consequent need to
conserve and protect its resources have played a
significant part in global and (in some countries)
national policy-making since at least the 1960s.
n Major shifts have taken place in
understanding the relationship bet-ween
economic and social policy. The traditional
view that saw economic and social policy
as essentially different domains—the
one concerned with creating wealth, the
other with its distribution—is giving way
to one that sees them as two sides of
the same human development agenda.
For example, as well as addressing basic
human needs, education and health
care policies are increasingly regarded as
21
 essential components of policies aimed at
improving productivity, competitiveness
and economic growth, and part, therefore,
of national strategies for development
within the global marketplace.
ICTs may have systemic effects within society
as a whole that result in transformations
of the behaviour, attitudes and values
of individuals as citizens and consumers,
of economic and social structures, and of
governance processes.
n Environmental and resource management
(ERM) is emerging as a significant area of
economic activity, including traditional
activities of the primary sector, such
as agriculture, forestry, fishing and
mining, and traditional government
responsibilities for protecting and
conserving the natural environment. It
also reaches beyond these to engage
all economic and social sectors in the
pursuit of sustainability, thereby creating
opportunities for entrepreneurship and
innovation in the private, public and
non-profit sectors. Waste management
and recycling are growing industries of
increasingly international dimensions.
The environmental impact assessments
that are now required in many countries
before major capital projects can be
undertaken have generated growing
demand for specialized expertise. The
introduction of cap-and-trade systems
to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions
has also created demand for expertise
in carbon footprint analysis and led to
the creation of carbon registries and
exchanges. Environmental education
has become part of the public education
22 ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm
curriculum in many jurisdictions, and
degrees in ERM are now available.
n Sustainable development policy-makers
recognize that it will be impossible to
achieve economic and social objectives
of the kind set out in the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) and at the
same time maintain a healthy, sustainable
environment without significant
technological innovation. Innovation is
needed not only in the production and
consumption of energy and raw materials
and in the management of the earth’s
major ecosystems, but also in the ways
that economies function, societies are
organized and individuals live their lives.
n Sustainable development policy-makers
also recognize that all countries, from the
poorest to the richest, face the challenge of
achieving a healthy balance between the
economic, social and environmental pillars
of sustainable development through sou-
nd policy, technology-enabled innovation
and socioeconomic transformation. This
challenge is particularly daunting in
the major emerging economies, where
policy-makers must deal with the rising
expectations of a rapidly growing middle
class, and in low-income developing
countries where large proportions of the
population are still trapped in poverty.
The challenges facing all countries will
become even more difficult if, as forecast,
the world’s population grows from its
current level of six to seven billion to
nine to ten billion over the next forty
years, putting additional pressure on
environmental resources, economic
relationships and social structures.
Just as sustainable development policy-makers
have begun to focus on the role of innovation,
market mechanisms, and social entrepreneurship
in the achievement of environmental and other
objectives, the ICT sector and ICT policy-makers
have begun to recognize the problems that the
ICT sector itself poses for the environment and
the opportunities that ICTs offer for contributing
towards a green economy.
Over the past decade, a consensus has emerged
that ICTs impact the green economy in three
principal ways. These correspond to the first,
second and third order effects discussed in
the Forum for the Future framework described
in Section 3 above. They have direct effects
on the environment through the production,
distribution, operation and disposal of ICTs.
These effects are largely negative from the
perspective of environmental sustainability.
They can be mitigated by enabling greater
efficiency in energy and materials production
and use, increased use of renewable energy
sources, reduced use of toxic materials, and
improved recycling and end-of-life disposal of
ICTs.
They have indirect effects on the development
of a green economy where they enable
improvements in the efficiency of production,
distribution and consumption of other goods
and services throughout the economy and
society—for example, by improving the
efficiency of energy production and distribution
and of transport logistics; by reducing demand
for energy and materials through virtualization;
and through the dematerialization of some
human activities and interactions. These effects
are expected to be largely positive from the
perspective of environmental sustainability,
though assessment is made more difficult by the
uncertainty surrounding rebound effects.
ICTs may have systemic effects within society
as a whole that result in transformations of the
behaviour, attitudes and values of individuals as
citizens and consumers, of economic and social
structures, and of governance processes. These
effects may be positive or negative from the
perspective of environmental sustainability.
ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm
Direct effects
It is generally agreed now that, to support the
transition to a greener economy, the ICT sector has
to improve its own environmental performance.
n The problems associated with electronic
waste have been recognized for some
time, and have begun to be addressed
through improvements to product
design and industry codes of practice, as
well as through recycling programs and
regulatory action at local, national and
international levels. (Attitudinal changes
among both suppliers and consumers
that reduce obsolescence and thereby
increase the lifetime of equipment
would also be beneficial.) In spite of
some progress, however, at present the
volume of electronic waste continues to
grow annually and there are substantial
problems associated with informal and
illegal disposal, particularly in developing
countries and where waste from industrial
countries is transferred to these.
n More recently, attention has shifted to
the greenhouse gas emissions generated
by the ICT sector in the production and
distribution of its products and services.
As noted in Section 3 above, it is estimated
that the ICT sector currently generates
around 2 to 3 per cent of global CO2
emissions, an amount greater than the
emissions of the airline industry and
roughly equivalent to those of a country
such as Canada. These emissions are
expected to continue to grow at a 6
per cent compound annual growth rate,
almost tripling by 2020 under a “business
as usual” scenario.
Enabling effects
There is a significant level of international
agreement concerning ways in which ICTs can
support green growth by enabling more efficient
23
production and use of energy resources. This
results from work over the past five to ten years by
a number of international organizations, including
the European Commission, the OECD and the
International Telecommunication Union, by
leading environmental agencies such as the World
Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), and by industry
partnerships such as the Global e-Sustainability
Initiative (GeSI).
n ICTs can help to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions by enabling increased energy
efficiency—for example, through the
development of “smart” energy grids,
transportation systems, buildings, and
production/distribution processes in the
agricultural, resource and manufacturing
sectors. GeSI’s Smart 2020 study (GeSI,
2008) estimated that the deployment
of smart systems in these sectors could
reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 15
per cent by 2020 under a BAU scenario
and result in an economic benefit of
US$950 billion. However, this calculation
rests upon highly optimistic estimates of
the speed, extent and scale with which
managements in these other sectors take
up such opportunities.
n ICTs may reduce the demand for energy
and materials throughout the economy
as well as in government and the public
sector through “dematerialization”—the
whole or partial substitution of virtual
products, services and processes for
their physical equivalents through
e-commerce, digital media, tele-work,
e-government, e-education, e-heath,
etc. However, dematerialization does
not eliminate energy requirements and
significant rebound effects are likely to
affect the extent to which carbon savings
are achieved in practice.
n The Internet and other ICTs can provide
24 ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm
individuals and communities with access
to information, communication and
knowledge resources that they can use
to respond to sustainability challenges
through action at local, regional, national
and global levels—for example, by
reducing household energy consumption,
substituting virtual products and services
for their physical equivalents, improving
re-use and recycling, adapting to the
effects of climate change, and contributing
to the development and implementation
of sustainable development policies
and practices through engagement in
governance processes. However, the
high value attached to these information
resources does have its own energy costs,
particularly where the low cost of energy
encourages users to keep equipment
running when it is not actually in use.
n ICTs can play an important role in
monitoring, measuring and managing the
natural, human and built systems of the
physical environment through remote
sensing systems, embedded sensor
networks, radio-frequency identification
(RFID), and ubiquitous networking
technologies that together make up
what has been called the “Internet of
Things.” Improved measurement can
enhance early warning mechanisms as
well as enabling more efficient utilization
of facilities.
Realizing these potential synergies between
the digital and green economies is not
straightforward. As suggested by the discussion
above, it requires action by all stakeholders
involved in the deployment and use of ICTs.
These stakeholders include governments and
regulators, which set the framework within
which ICTs are deployed and used; professionals
involved in standard-setting and equipment
design; manufacturers, network and service
providers and other businesses involved in
making ICTs and the Internet available to users;
and end-users—including major business users
such as the financial service sector, government
and social agencies such as universities and
other public services, and individual consumers.
These stakeholders ultimately determine how
efficiently their equipment is used, when, and
how frequently it is replaced. Many policy issues
arise within this context, all of which have
important implications for sustainability. These
include:
n how to achieve universal, affordable access
to open broadband networks and services,
at minimal environmental cost;
n the promotion of digital literacy and
development of the capabilities people
need efficiently and effectively to
access information, communicate, share
knowledge and experience, generate
content, adapt, and innovate in an
increasingly digital economy;
n deployment of the new addressing and
object-identifying resources, such as IPv6,
that are critical for the development of the
Internet of Things and its application to
smart energy grids, transportation systems,
buildings and production processes, as
well as to environmental monitoring and
the management of natural resources;
n development of standards and protocols
for networking the Internet, Next
Generation Networks and the Internet of
Things as platforms for developing and
implementing “green ICT” and “smart
solutions” throughout the economy and
society;
n the role of regulation, incentives,
partnership programs and public
procurement in supporting ICT-enabled
green innovation; and
ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm
n public policy at the interface between
ICTs, the Internet and other public policy
domains, including issues such as identity,
privacy, child and consumer protection,
cybercrime, information and network
security, digital media, and intellectual
property — a range that is increasing as
the Internet becomes more widespread
and important in everyday life.
There is growing awareness that innovative
governance approaches are needed to develop,
implement and adapt policies and strategies in the
fast-moving context of the digital economy, in ways
that respect fundamental democratic principles
of representation, responsibility, transparency
and accountability. Both environmental and
Internet policy spaces have proved interesting
testing grounds for new ways of engaging diverse
stakeholders in decision-making. These innovative
approaches include:
n non-governmental and consensus-based
approaches to decision-making of the
kind originally developed for technical
and coordination purposes within the
Internet community, but which have wider
potential applicability;
n self-regulatory and co-regulatory
processes that have been adopted and
adapted by governments to deal with
Internet-related public policy issues—for
example, in connection with spam, child
protection and cybercrime;
n adaptive policy-making processes, based
on principles, tools and practices such as
those that have been identified by IISD
through its comparative analysis of policy-
making in the fields of climate change
mitigation, water resources management,
healthcare, energy, transportation, ICTs
and development (see Box 3 on “Adaptive
Policies” below); and
25
 n multi-stakeholder governance processes
of the kind pioneered internationally by
the Internet Governance Forum, which
seek to incorporate diversity of experience
into policy debate and decision-making.
Systemic effects
While it is relatively easy to identify direct
and indirect or enabling effects of ICTs and
the Internet on economy and society, it is
much more difficult to establish what long-
term systemic impacts may result from their
widespread adoption. Very little research has
been conducted on the systemic effects of ICTs
on the economy, society and environment, or
on the policies and strategies needed to ensure
that systemic outcomes of the digital economy
support the transition to a green economy in
the longer term. In addition, the very rapid
pace of change in technology, services and
markets that characterizes information and
communication technology makes it difficult
to predict what may happen beyond a three
to four year time horizon. (It is interesting, in
this respect, to compare the communications
environment of 2010 with that at the end
of the World Summit on the Information
Society less than five years ago—a period
in which the reach of mobile telephony and
the Internet has extended greatly, in which
social networking has emerged as a major
social dynamic, in which broadband networks
and mobile Internet have become prevailing
trends, and in which new communications and
Internet modalities, such as cloud computing,
have emerged.)
There are many important policy questions
that require serious analysis at this nexus
between the digital and green economies. As
suggested by the discussion above, those that
have received attention in the literature on
26 ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm
the relationship between ICTs and sustainable
development include the following:
n Rebound effects: Will the increased
energy and material efficiencies enabled
by the use of ICTs result in increased
consumption? Economic theory and
practical experience suggest that this
is likely to happen in the absence of
measures to suppress supply and/or
demand. If so, what are the relative
merits of different policy options for
dealing with rebound effects?
n Unintended consequences: What is
the human impact of the openness
and dematerialization enabled by the
Internet? How and to what extent
could unintended consequences
for individuals, social relationships,
communities, organizations, and
countries limit the capacity of the digital
economy to support the transition
to a green economy? What policies,
strategies and governance mechanisms
are needed to deal efficiently
and effectively with unintended
consequences?
n Uncertainties and unforeseen events:
What new kinds of threats and
vulnerabilities arise in a world where
human, material and natural systems
are interconnected and hyperlinked in
real time, particularly when artificial
intelligences of one kind or another
come to make decisions? What policies
and strategies are needed to anticipate
uncertainties and respond to the
impact of unforeseen events? How
can these policies and strategies be
shaped so as to avoid creating barriers
to the synergistic growth of the digital
economy and the green economy?
 Integrating ICTs and
6 Sustainable Development
Integrating sustainable development
into ICT/Internet public policy
The discussion in Section 3 of this paper
emphasized the importance of drawing
understanding of sustainable development and
ICTs together into a common framework. At the
heart of that discussion is the observation that
ICTs and their use are having transformative
impacts on all aspects of human behaviour
(economic and political, social and cultural) and
that these impacts are taking place at all levels,
from the planet as a whole to the household
and the family. Many of these impacts are
highly disruptive of established ways of doing
things, including laws, regulations and norms.
Such changes stem from the nature of ICTs
as general purpose technologies (GPTs). They
are important not just as particular changes in
specific areas of activity but because together
they have a cumulative impact on the structure
and organization of human life—of culture
and society, of politics and economics, of the
relationships among the individual, the state
and other actors.
These impacts are not merely fundamental;
they are also unpredictable. The pace of
change in ICT technology and markets today
is exceptionally rapid. Large-scale changes in
human behaviour—such as the adoption of
new production and trade arrangements, the
development of mass market mobile telephony
(and so of immediate communications at a
distance for all communities), the restructuring
of media and information access resulting
from the Internet and the advent of social
networking—now happen very quickly indeed.
ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm
It is very hard to anticipate which technological
and market innovations will have comparable
effects on society and economy, politics and
culture in ten years’ time, but it is certain that
some such innovations will have such impacts.
These impacts have two crucial implications
for sustainable development. The first is
that ICTs are shifting the ground beneath
assumptions that have historically been made
about how societies and economies work and
so about the implications of sustainability.
For example, transition to smart grid energy
management (computerized management of
electricity generation and distribution in order
to prioritize energy efficiency) will change
the environmental sustainability outcomes
of the energy sector in which it occurs. A
shift to just-in-time production methods in
manufacturing may change the viability and
sustainability of a particular kind of product
development. The ability of family members
to communicate and transfer money instantly
across continents has important implications
for the sustainability of family relationships
in both social and economic contexts. It is
essential that sustainable development think-
ing understands and accommodates
changes such as these in behaviour and in
the socioeconomic structures that impact
sustainability. Unless sustainable development
analysis reflects the underlying changes in
economy and society that are taking place
as a result of ICTs, then it will be concerned
with sustainability for the past rather than
sustainability for the present and the future.
The second implication concerns the
unpredictability of the sector. It is not just that
sustainable development analysis needs to
accommodate the impact of ICTs today, vis-à-
27
 vis the past, but that it needs to accommodate
the ongoing, continuous and unpredictable
impact of ICTs in future. If some of today’s
assumptions about sustainability need to differ
from those made in 1987, when the term was
coined, so do some of tomorrow’s assumptions
need to differ from those that are made today.
The impact of ICTs on society, economy and
sustainability needs continual assessment to
make sure that policy prescriptions continue to
relate to changing circumstances. IISD’s work
on adaptive policy-making, which recognizes
this challenge, is described in Box 3 later in this
section.
At present, however, the adoption of this
kind of environmental impact assessment
is underdeveloped within ICT and Internet
standards development.
Understanding the impact of ICTs on sustainable
development, both today and in the future, requires
an analytical framework. Section 3 of this paper
described one such framework, which was set out
in the Forum for the Future’s 2002 report for the
European Information Technology Observatory on
The impact of ICT on sustainable development.
Similar frameworks, and matrices like that in Section
3, have been used in other sustainability analysis.
The matrix illustrated in Section 3 is built around two
crucial distinctions:
n that between the three main pillars
of sustainability (economic, social and
environmental);
n and that between first order (direct), second
order (indirect) and third order (societal)
effects.
By juxtaposing these, it provides a flexible
28 ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm
framework for analyzing the relationship between
ICTs and sustainability, and the changes that are
taking place within that relationship. It enables
analysis both of individual ICTs and of ICTs in
general, of the sustainability of ICTs themselves
and of the impact of ICTs on overall sustainability.
Systematic analysis along these lines can help to
build up an overall picture that will have two key
values:
n It will help to identify areas where
economic, social, environmental and
development agencies and actors can
take advantage of the sustainability
gains that ICTs can help deliver.
n It will help to identify areas where
detrimental outcomes are certain or
highly likely, in which steps to mitigate
those outcomes are required either
within the ICT sector or from wider
agencies.
The World Summit on the Information Society
included the declaration of the second Earth
Summit—alongside the UN Charter, the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and the Millennium
Development Goals—among those international
agreements that should underpin thinking about
the development of an Information Society.
So far, that integration of ICTs and sustainable
development has been largely absent from
international discourse. As mentioned earlier, the
third Earth Summit will be held in Brazil in 2012.
This presents an opportunity for the international
community to rectify that omission, and for
sustainable development and ICT specialists to
take stock: to assess the impact that ICTs already
have on sustainability, the impact that they are
likely to have, or the impact they might have,
with suitable policy approaches over the next ten
years.
The 2012 Earth Summit can therefore help to
bridge the paradigm gap that currently exists
between these two fields, incorporating the ICT
sector into sustainable development thinking. But
this is an opportunity that could be missed if work
does not begin now. IISD welcomes the fact that
an expert from the ICT sector has been included
in the High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability.
Much more, however, is needed between now
and 2012 to fill in the matrix above with genuine
understanding. IISD is committed to working in
this area in the run-up to 2012, and a proposal
concerning this is made in Section 7.
Integrating sustainable development
into ICT/Internet public policy
If there are weaknesses in the level to which
ICT/Internet policy is integrated into sustainable
development thinking (digitizing the green
economy), there are similar weaknesses in
the extent to which sustainable development
thinking has penetrated ICT policy-making
(greening the digital economy). Important work
has been undertaken recently in several forums
concerned with the environmental dimensions
of sustainability, including the OECD, the
International Telecommunication Union and the
business community. This work has addressed the
environmental impact of ICTs in an increasingly
open way. However, it has achieved only limited
traction in ICT discussion and decision-making
spaces like the Internet Governance Forum and
ICANN. Where attention is paid to sustainability
in these, it tends to focus on environmental
issues and on potential positives (second order
effects) rather than current challenges (first order
effects). A serious comprehensive analysis of
the relationship between ICTs and sustainable
development is still awaited, and much needed
(see Section 7 for a proposal).
The challenge of integrating sustainability into
ICT development arises in many different aspects
of information technology, from design to
ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm
disposal. The standard-setting process can serve
here to illustrate the challenge. In many policy
domains today, it has become commonplace to
incorporate environmental impact assessment
in the development of standards. Often it is
possible to achieve similar technical, economic
or social outcomes in a variety of ways, but these
different approaches may have very different
environmental implications—for example,
requiring higher or lower levels of energy use. It
makes sense in these contexts to make decisions
about standards that promote sustainability, not
just in environmental terms but also economically
and socially.
At present, however, the adoption of this
kind of environmental impact assessment
is underdeveloped within ICT and Internet
standards development. Internet professionals
have (understandably) prioritized the stability
and security of the Internet in their processes
for agreeing upon protocols and standards.
However, different standards options may well
have substantially different impacts downstream
on, for example, network configuration, traffic
routing, access to and cost of services, and energy
requirements. The ethos of Internet standard-
setting does not currently accommodate
environmental impact assessments that would
identify such outcomes. As the Internet becomes
increasingly important, however, and has an
increased impact on economy, society, culture
and sustainability, this needs to change.
Incorporating environmental impact assessment
into standard-setting for ICTs and the Internet
need not threaten innovation or creativity.
Indeed, in other sectors, including sustainability
in the criteria for standard-setting and equipment
design has invigorated innovation by posing new
challenges to technologists and entrepreneurs.
Information technology can be highly disruptive
of established norms, as it has been for example
in intellectual property and some areas of fiscal
29
 policy. Solutions to sustainability challenges may
be just as radical.
Attention to sustainability in ICT/Internet policy
and practice does not imply a shift away from
consensus towards regulation in policy-making
or standard-setting. Impact assessment of any
kind, whether economic, social or environmental,
implies consultation and engagement with the
wider community, reaching beyond governments
to citizens, beyond businesses to consumers,
beyond professional experts to all stakeholder
groups. It is not formal arrangements that are most
important here. What matters most is the ethos of
decision-making: an acceptance that sustainability
is a criterion that should be part of the decision-
making process alongside technological quality,
efficiency, profitability and security.
Attention to sustainability in ICT/Internet
policy and practice does not imply a shift
away from consensus towards regulation in
policy-making or standard-setting.
It is relatively easy to identify areas of environ-
mental impact in which greater sustainability
would be desirable. The significance of standards
has already been mentioned. Here are four further
examples:
n Much ICT equipment has a short
lifespan. The pace at which businesses
and individual consumers replace
equipment is partly determined by
the constant upgrading of hardware
and software specifications in mobile
communications, computing and the
Internet, which results from increasing
technical capabilities. Falling prices
for ICT hardware also encourage rapid
30 ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm
turnover of equipment, and the disposal
of equipment that is still viable. Industry
norms at present therefore favour
short product lifecycles: hardware
and software are highly obsolescent.
Alternative approaches to hardware
and software development, however,
could extend the average lifespan of
equipment, for example by making
the upgrading of existing equipment
more attractive to consumers than its
replacement. Increasing the lifespan of
computers and mobile phones from
two to four years would have significant
positive outcomes for sustainability,
as well as economic benefits for
consumers.
n Much ICT equipment is currently
designed to remain in operation or
on standby for long periods of time
when it is not in actual use, consuming
unnecessary electrical power. A number
of factors encourage consumers
to keep equipment powered up,
including the length of time that it
takes to boot up computers in order
to use “always available” broadband
access to the Internet. The ICT industry
has paid significant attention to the
supply side of this equation, through
efforts to reduce power requirements
of equipment and extend battery
life, though more could (and will) be
done on this. Less attention has been
paid to the demand side, to ways of
encouraging consumers to make more
energy-efficient use of their equipment
and discouraging them from behaviour
that is wasteful.
n Significantly greater sustainability
could also be achieved upstream from
end-users, in data centres and in the
development of new ways of managing
 computing and communications. A
high proportion of data centre costs,
for example, result from requirements
for air conditioning to keep equipment
cool. Greater temperature tolerance
within equipment could significantly
reduce the economic and carbon costs
of energy (another area to which the
industry has paid significant attention).
New ways of delivering information and
communication services, such as cloud
computing, pose further questions
(some of which are discussed in Box
2 earlier in this paper). These options
may enable significant energy savings.
However, assumptions that cloud
computing will be more energy efficient
than current configurations need to be
tested through rigorous prior impact
assessment.
n The disposal of electronic waste is a
significant and growing problem
for all countries. In addition to the
sheer volume of waste, ICT equipment
includes components and chemicals
that are toxic or otherwise hazardous.
This is a challenge even where waste
management is well regulated.
However, the illegal routing of waste to
countries with inadequate regulatory
or enforcement regimes threatens lives
and the long-term viability of land that
is used for storage or disposal. Measures
are needed not just to manage the
disposal of unwanted equipment, but
also to reduce toxicity, increase the
recyclability of equipment and the ease
with which recycling can take place,
and encourage adaptation rather than
replacement of equipment that is
nearing the end of active life.
These examples are concerned primarily with
the environmental dimension of sustainability,
ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm
though similar illustrations could be made for its
social, economic and cultural dimensions. The
principal challenge here for those engaged in the
development and use of ICTs—product designers,
ICT businesses and major users, governments,
regulators and individual citizens—concerns
the need to encourage ways of thinking that
appreciate the outcomes of choices made in
product design, service delivery and consumer
use, and assess those outcomes in terms of
their long-term impact on social, economic and
environmental sustainability.
Implications for governance
As discussed above, the relationship between
sustainable development and ICT/Internet
decision-making is poorly established at both
global and national levels, in both sustainable
development and ICT/Internet forums.
Historically, these have been seen as distinct
policy domains. Even where the outcome
documents of international forums—such as the
World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)
or the Millennium Development Goals—refer to
the relationship between them, references have
tended to be tokenistic and superficial. There was
no meaningful dialogue between WSIS and the
almost simultaneous Millennium Review Summit
in 2005. Development specialists still seem to
be divided between those who take a highly
optimistic view of the transformative potential
of ICTs and those who see them as marginal to
poverty reduction and other priority development
concerns. IISD believes that these gaps in
paradigms and discourse must be addressed. In
addition to the policy issues discussed above,
three governance issues will be significant in
taking this agenda forward.
First, the institutional frameworks for considering
sustainable development and ICTs/Internet are
too disparate. Sustainable development has been
seen too much as an environmental issue within
31
the UN system and other intergovernmental
agencies, rather than as a challenge facing all
aspects of development. It needs to become
more central to multilateral practice as well as
rhetoric. The principal governance forums for
the ICT sector, meanwhile, are primarily technical
rather than developmental. The International
Telecommunication Union (ITU) has a significant
development program and seeks to achieve
developmental as well as technical outcomes, but
is still seen within the UN system and elsewhere as
a source of technical rather than developmental
input. The variety of looser (and generally non-
governmental) standards and coordination
arrangements for the Internet have developed
within the Internet community, focusing primarily
on the working of the Internet rather than its
growing interface with society, economy, politics
and culture. WSIS and the Internet Governance
Forum (IGF) have provided spaces for more general
discussion of the developmental impact of ICTs,
but have had neither the time nor the resources
to develop systematic analysis. There has been
an understandable tendency to emphasize the
positive impact of ICTs on economic growth and
empowerment and to ignore downsides such as
increased waste and greenhouse gas emissions.
We need to find spaces within the institutional
frameworks for development and for ICTs in
which the relationship between them can be
analyzed, and appropriate agreements reached to
maximize development and sustainability gains
and mitigate negative impacts.
Second, international policy-making concerned
with both sustainability and ICTs has broadened
the scope of participation, enabling other
stakeholder communities—especially the private
sector and civil society—to participate in ways
that have not been common in other policy
domains. In the case of sustainable development,
this results from the need to question and consult
about the impact of environmental and other
32 ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm
changes on diverse communities. Governments
have learned through experience that policy in
this area needs to be built around evidence and
consent: sustainability is not something that can
be imposed but must be based on the confidence
of those affected by decisions. In the ICT/Internet
space, multi-stakeholder participation has built
upon the early experience of the Internet, where
collaborative entities rather than government
or intergovernmental agencies have been
responsible for developing standards and
coordinating networks, numbering and service
delivery.
The implications of wider stakeholder
participation are only beginning to be
understood, and will take some time to work
through. Some intergovernmental agencies
and some governments are resistant to private
sector and especially civil society participation.
Nor is participation yet necessarily representative
of society in the round. In the ICT field, more
participation is certainly needed from private
sector businesses that are consumers rather
than suppliers of ICTs and Internet services, and
from mainstream civil society organizations
that are primarily concerned with issues such as
development, rights and the environment rather
than with information and communications.
Nevertheless, multi-stakeholder approaches offer
an opportunity to create more flexible decision-
making spaces that may be able to respond more
effectively to changing needs and demands than
institutions in which only governments can play
a part.
The third challenge, which is discussed here in
more detail, concerns the types of specialized
regulatory mechanisms that have been developed
in many countries, and in international forums, to
oversee the activities of the telecommunications
and broadcasting sectors. These are proving
inadequate to cope with the speed at which ICTs
and the Internet evolve. In addition, specialized
programs that have been put in place to support This same approach has been maintained
the Internet’s role in development have often internationally. Although some countries
failed to live up to expectations, often for the same have sought to impose governmental or
reason: by the time a program is fully underway, its intergovernmental control on the Internet,
technology and market assumptions are already there has been strong (and, to date, successful)
likely to have become outmoded. resistance from others to any attempt to
develop international governance mechanisms
When the Internet began to grow very rapidly for the Internet similar to those that exist for
following the invention of the World Wide Web, telecommunications and broadcasting. There
the governments of most industrialized countries has also been engagement, varying over time, by
took the view that any attempt to regulate it in multilateral and bilateral donors in stimulating
the ways that other communications sectors had Internet access and applications.
been regulated—by passing laws that applied
specifically to it, issuing licenses to Internet Service
Providers (ISPs), regulating services and tariffs and
requiring cross-subsidies between different classes
of Internet user—would stifle the growth of the
Internet, inhibit economic and social innovation,
and deprive the public of opportunities to access,
create, communicate, and share information and
knowledge. It was noted that the community of
Internet developers and service providers had
been self-governing from the beginning, working
through consensus-based non-governmental
entities like the Internet Engineering Task Force,
and it was widely believed that the Internet might
never have developed at all if it had been subject
to traditional government policy-making and
regulation.

Instead of adopting Internet-specific governance

mechanisms, many countries therefore allowed
the Internet community largely to continue
administering itself, and to rely on general purpose
laws and regulatory mechanisms, such as those
governing competition, consumer protection,
intellectual property and crime, which could be
updated as necessary to deal with any public policy
issues that arose in connection with the Internet.
In addition, governments of many countries
launched programs to extend public access to
the Internet and to promote the development of
Internet applications in areas as such education,
health and the delivery of public services.
ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm
This two-pronged approach to Internet
governance—a largely “hands off” approach to
regulation combined with program support for
infrastructure and applications development—
has begun to break down as a result of several
factors.
A number of trends in the regulatory
arena have been influential. These include
increasing convergence between the Internet,
telecommunications, broadcasting and media
33
sectors; increasing concern about the security
and stability of the Internet as it becomes a
critical infrastructure for the functioning of
national economies and societies; and the
globalization of Internet-related problems,
such as cyber-crime. As a result of these trends,
governments have begun to engage more
deeply in Internet regulation, both nationally
and internationally.
In the development arena, many programs to
support Internet access (for example through
tele-centres) and the development of Internet-
based applications have not had the scale of
impact that had been anticipated. Instead, over
the past decade the market-led development
of the mobile communications sector has
generally had a stronger impact on society and
on individual lives in low-income countries than
the growth of the Internet. The development of
Internet access through mobile devices rather
than computers is now increasingly important
and likely to become the predominant mode
of access in many countries in at least the
medium term.
With mobile communications going broadband
and intelligent sensor networks beginning to be
deployed in the natural and built environments
in the developed world, the challenge facing
policy-makers is to prevent new digital
divides from opening between developed and
developing countries, just as the old divide in
access to basic telecommunication services
is closing. New kinds of governance may be
required here. Ways of doing things that worked
effectively when, for example, the Internet was
unimportant, poorly distributed and had little
impact on social and economic outcomes, are
not necessarily sustainable into a future in
which the Internet is highly influential across
all social and economic domains.
This is a complex challenge, particularly because
of the very rapid pace of change in information
34 ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm
technology and markets, but it is not unique.
Other areas of sustainable development
are also characterized by complex adaptive
systems in which there are high degrees of
uncertainty. Box 3 outlines the results of a
five-year research project on adaptive policy-
making that IISD has undertaken in conjunction
with The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI)
and the International Development Research
Centre (IDRC). The aim of this project was to
identify principles and practices that could
assist policy-makers in adapting to anticipated
and unanticipated change, and in coping with
the kinds of uncertainties that are found at
the interface between ICTs, the Internet and
sustainable development. The findings of the
project are summarized in Box 3.
None of the adaptive policy-making principles
and practices identified in this study is new.
Their value lies in their systematic application.
All of the elements of the IISD adaptive policy-
making toolkit are found in the field of Internet
governance/public policy but rarely, if ever,
have they been systematically applied. Thus, for
example, the Internet Governance Forum (IGF)
has provided a venue for multi-stakeholder
deliberation on many important Internet
public policy issues. However, it has done so
without the benefit of integrated, systematic,
forward-looking analysis of the kind that can
be generated by scenario-building and other
foresight techniques. The IGF has also lacked
effective means for enabling policy innovation
in international, regional or national bodies
concerned with Internet governance. IISD
believes that the IGF and these other ICT/
internet entities should examine how adaptive
policy-making can be applied to their work
over the next five years.
 Adaptive policy-making

From 2005 to 2009, in conjunction with The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and the International
Development Research Centre (IDRC), IISD conducted a multi-phase research project aimed at
identifying the tools and processes needed to design and implement successful policies in the
conditions of uncertainty that characterize the complex, dynamic and interconnected human and
natural systems of sustainable development.

The Adaptive Policy Project (ADP) did not invent new policy tools, but rather used a case study and
interview approach to find tools that had worked well in diverse circumstances. The contribution of
the project is to bring these tools together in the context of policy-making under uncertainty, and to
highlight the need for policy designers to take these issues into account as policies are amended or
designed anew.

Creating adaptive policies: A guide for policy-makers in an uncertain world (Swanson & Bhadwal, 2009),
the final report of the project, is available at http://www.iisd.org/publications/pub.aspx?id=1180. As
discussed in the report, research for the project suggested that there are four types of activities that
policy designers should undertake, and seven tools that are available to assist them. To create adaptive
policies, policy-makers should:

n Understand the policy environment. They should clearly understand the intended goals
of the policy, key factors affecting performance, and the expected future development of
those factors. The tools of Integrated and Forward Looking Analysis and Multi-Stakeholder
Deliberation are intended to help in understanding the policy environment.

n Enable innovation. Innovative policy instruments can provide useful inputs to policy design
and development, both through the new approaches they excite and through the evidence
they provide about factors facilitating success or failure. This can be facilitated through tools
such as Decentralization of Decision Making, Self Organization and Social Networking, and
Variation.

n Monitor the context. Policy developers must also monitor and assess the results of
implementation, for two reasons: to ensure that the policies are doing what they were
designed to do, and to be aware when circumstances (such as technology and markets)
have changed so much that policies themselves need to be changed if they are to meet
their goals. The tools for Automatic Adjustment and Formal Policy Review and Continuous
Learning, address this challenge.

n Improve outcomes. As both the policy environment and knowledge of a policy’s operation
evolve over time, policy developers and program managers must use the warnings and
opportunities provided to make necessary adjustments to ensure performance.

ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm 35

 7 Conclusion and Recommendations
Climate change and
communications revolution are
the
fundamental changes affecting the relationships
between countries, within societies and
economies, and between individuals. Both
domains are subject to rapid change in context
and understanding, and forward projections
in both are uncertain and unpredictable. This
paper has argued that both, and the changes
that occur within them, are central to our
understanding of sustainable development.
Both require adaptive governance and wider
stakeholder involvement in policy development
and decision-making than is conventional in
other policy domains.
What happens in the ICT and Internet contexts,
in short, will affect what is sustainable and what
can be done about sustainability in future. The
nexus between these policy domains is crucial,
complex and insufficiently understood. This
paper ends with three proposals for next steps
that can be taken to address the present gaps
in thinking.
What happens in the ICT and Internet
contexts, in short, will affect what is
sustainable and what can be done about
sustainability in future.
The first proposal is for the issues described
in this paper to be analyzed in greater depth
by both sustainable development and ICT/
Internet communities, acting jointly. One way
of doing this would be for a small commission
of experts to review and analyze the evidence
for consideration within international forums
concerned with both sustainable development
and ICTs. The analytical framework devised
36 ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm
by the Forum for the Future and described
in Section 3 would provide one important
starting point for this work, and would also
draw on evidence from a wider range of diverse
stakeholders. The commission’s report should
feed into discussions ahead of the third Earth
Summit in 2012, but should also contribute
to the wider range of development and ICT
decision-making forums, including the Internet
Governance Forum. IISD would be prepared to
provide the secretariat for such an initiative,
though this would require commitment and
support from a variety of stakeholders.
While this first recommendation is primarily
global in intent, the concept would also be
valuable at a national level. Single country
or regional consideration of the link between
sustainable development and ICTs/Internet
would enable better targeting of national
ICT and digital economy strategies. It would
also contribute to the quality of any global
assessment.
The second proposal made here follows from
the discussion of standard-setting, network
deployment, etc. in Section 6. Increased access
to and use of ICTs by citizens, and ICTs’ increased
predominance in government and business
communications, inevitably have detrimental
environmental impacts, particularly in terms of
waste and greenhouse gas emissions. Mitigation
of these impacts would have a significant
positive impact on sustainability.
Government and international regulation—for
example, of emissions standards and waste
disposal—clearly has a role to play in promoting
mitigation, but the primary responsibility for
this lies with the supply and demand side of
the ICT/Internet sector, with the businesses
that produce equipment, the service providers
that enable access and with users, from large
corporations to individual households. The
second recommendation of this report is that
the industry and consumer organizations
should work together to develop guidelines
for environmental impact assessment and
mitigation of negative environmental outcomes
that can apply at different points along the
supply chain. These points can include standard-
setting, network configuration, the design of
data centres and terminal devices, the ways
in which services are routed to end-users, life-
cycle choices concerning equipment (including
addressing the challenges of obsolescence and
disposal) and the responsible use of energy and
ICT equipment by commercial and domestic
users. The aim would be to help different actors
reduce the negative environmental impact
of their engagement with ICTs. IISD would
welcome the opportunity to work with industry
and consumer organizations to develop these
ideas.
main themes for the third Earth Summit in 2012.
As well as addressing the substantive issues
involved, there is a need for policy-makers to
think more about process: about identifying
ways in which policy approaches can be made
sufficiently flexible to suit rapidly changing
circumstances, so that they can meet broad
objectives (such as universal access) without
locking government, business or citizens into
particular technologies or market mechanisms.
Adaptiveness is crucial to this evolution in
governance. ICTs also have much to offer
changing governance frameworks. IISD would
be happy to share its work in both these fields
and develop that work further with stakeholders
in government, business and civil society.

The third proposal of this report concerns the

way in which policy processes in this field
should develop for the future. As discussed
above, the rapid pace of change in ICT
technology and markets mean that the impact
that they have on sustainability is in greater
flux than those in other sectors. Traditional
three- or five-year policy and program cycles
are unlikely to be adequate to address the
opportunities and challenges arising. This is
clearly challenging for some governance
bodies even within the communications field:
national telecommunications regulations are
often outdated, with regulators struggling to
keep their interventions in tune with changing
contexts. It is even more challenging in those
areas where changes brought about by ICTs
undermine legal and regulatory regimes that
were once thought to be effectively permanent
(for example, those for intellectual property).

The institutional framework for sustainability

is, alongside the green economy, one of the

ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm 37

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40 ICTs, the Internet and Sustainable Development: Towards a new paradigm